Iris meda

Description

A striking Iris with narrow, blade-shaped foliage and stems about 20 cm tall. It is characterised by having extremely long spathe-valves. It is close to sari (which is not accepted as occurring in Iran) but the falls are tucked in, lending the flower a totally different appearance. Iris meda is variable, it is usually thought of as having bright but pale, lemon yellow to creamy straw-yellow ground colours. These are veined with dull brown and a dense beard of bright yellow hairs immediately above a chestnut-maroon-black signal patch. There is however colour variation that encompasses yellows and purples. We are showing a range of colour forms here that have been found in the wild, for your interest. Can I stress however that our plants are cultivated, horticultural propagations, they are not wild-collected.

This stock is much more robust than the small forms from the Kurdish steppes far to the SW. These are horticultural propagations from plants originally from Iran, East Azerbaijan province, NE of Miyaneh (Mianeh, Meyaneh) at 1,500 m. among steppe vegetation in stony clay. Material from this locality (which was not accessible by road in the 1960s), has not been in cultivation before. The stock is a mixture of clones and seedlings raised from intercrosses between these clones. It shows the full variability of the species.

As a footnote, several other collections were made in the 1960s from a very different locality. Those variable, low altitude populations occur on the mudhills of the Zanjan Chay river valley, on the main road to Tehran, SSE of Miyaneh. They are the possibly hybrid populations mentioned by Brian Mathew in “The Iris”. These forms are not from those introductions but we do offer one such clone separately.